Schools ‘In Good Shape’ Financially in Second Quarter

School District Business Administrator Peter Curro gave the second quarter financial report to the School Board, stating that the general fund operating budget is in “good shape.”

“The second quarter financial report allows us time to detect significant trends either positive or negative and if it’s trending negative, we have time to make any necessary adjustments if needed moving forward,” Curro told the School Board at its Thursday, Jan. 30 meeting. “Nothing seems to be significantly trending.

“We are confident that the year-end surplus will be around $840,000,” Curro said.

Curro noted that school impact fees have already been collected by the town and $117,406 will be transferred to the district.

“Medicaid is running a little better than expected and the wild card in revenue is adequacy (funding),” he said. “It is now the end of January and I still can’t tell you what the adequacy number will be. We won’t know until the second week in March.” His best guess, he said, is a loss of $50,000.

Curro said that if it’s any larger, they would have to dip into the year-end surplus.

He noted that on the expenditure side, savings come from retirements and staff turnover, and on health and dental, “where we can only guess what surplus operating fund we would get from the risk pools, since now the Secretary of State has changed the way you get insurance premiums. Before they were netted; now we are given an estimate.”

Curro said workers’ compensation is over budget, but district staff knew that was the case in the beginning of the year.

“Food service will not make it and we knew that,” he added. “We have two lease payments for ovens and a freezer all in one year,” Curro said.

He said that if either one of them were not done this year, food service would break even. He said the shortfall is about $15,000.

Curro advised the board that the possible re-funding of the North School note was back in play. Although the bond market was getting volatile, Curro said the district’s financial advisor told him investors were looking at districts with high bond ratings, which are now in demand.

“There might be a quick turnaround, we might need a quick board meeting to ratify an interest rate and get it going, but we will probably have an answer back on that right after deliberative session. It’s due to the financial strength of the district,” Curro said.